Dear Billy

Aug. 31, 2018

If you’re a first-year College of Medicine student, then meeting your first patient is a rite of passage you can expect at Northeast Ohio Medical University long before actually working in a clinical setting. Through the University’s Body Donation Program, each student is paired with a body that becomes theirs to study in the Gross Anatomy Lab.

As part of the four-year humanities training at NEOMED, College of Medicine students learn the art of reflective writing, to help them process the many emotions they will feel when they become physicians.  Last year, College of Medicine student Kathryn Borthwick wrote a letter to her patient for her Human Values in Medicine class. Here’s Borthwick’s letter to “Billy,” reprinted from the new Fall 2018 issue of Ignite magazine.